GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Israeli warplanes killed three Palestinians in an airstrike in central Gaza City late Friday, medics said, raising the death toll to 14 in the coastal enclave since a deadly attack in southern Israel on Thursday.

The latest strike hit a civilian car killing three people from the same family including a 5-year-old boy and a doctor, Gaza medical official Adham Abu Salmiya said, adding that three others were wounded.

Israel has carried out more than a dozen airstrikes across the Gaza Strip following a series of deadly shooting attacks in the Negev desert left eight Israelis dead on Thursday.

Fourteen Palestinians have now been killed and scores injured after Israeli officials blamed Gaza-based militant group the Popular Resistance Committees, although the faction has denied any involvement.

On Friday evening, Hamas' armed wing the Al-Qassam Brigades called off a ceasefire with Israel and urged factions in Gaza to respond to Israeli attacks, Al-Aqsa Radio reported.

"There can be no truce with the Israeli occupation while it commits massacres against the Palestinian people without justification," a representative of the militant group was quoted as saying.

On Friday evening two Palestinians were killed in air raids near the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, a medical official said.

Earlier, an airstrike killed Samed Abdul Mu'ty Abed while he was riding a motorcycle in the north, medics said.

Another Palestinian, a 22-year-old identified as Muhammad Enayeh, was killed in a separate attack. His body and another injured person were taken Shifa hospital in Gaza City, medics said.

Abu Salmiya said missiles also targeted a concrete factory in the same area seriously injuring two locals.

Fighter jets bombed a generator near the camp, causing a power outage across the area and missiles hit a training camp of the armed wing of Hamas, the Al-Qassam Brigades, witnesses said.

The Israeli military said aircraft "targeted two weapons manufacturing sites in the central Gaza Strip and a terror activity site in both the northern and southern Gaza Strip."

"This is a response to the terror attacks executed against Israel in the last 24 hours," an army statement said.

At around 8 a.m. Friday Israel launched airstrikes on the Az-Zaitoun neighborhood south of Gaza City causing damage but no injuries, medics said.

Just after midnight Friday, Israeli warplanes launched a series of raids targeting Gaza City, the northern towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, and Khan Younis in the south.

Abu Salmiya said an airstrike on a home near the former intelligence services headquarters in Gaza City killed 13-year-old Mahmoud Abu Samra and injured 18 others.

Elsewhere, Apache helicopters fired at least two missiles toward a Palestinian military site in the town of Beit Lahiya and a missile near Khan Younis landed in an open area and caused no injuries or damage.

The overnight strikes followed a day of violence in which gunmen unleashed bloody mayhem on on a desert road near the Red Sea resort town of Eilat.

Six Israeli civilians, a soldier and a police officer were killed in several hours of attacks on a desert road some 20 kilometers north of Eilat.

Israel officials were quick to point the finger at Gaza, although the territory's Hamas rulers denied any connection to the attacks.

But the Israeli military said it held the Islamist group ultimately responsible for violence coming from the territory it controls.

"If Hamas wants an escalation, it will pay a high price," Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai told public radio on Friday, saying some form of ground operation in Gaza was not out of the question.

"All options are open, including a pin-point [ground] operation," he said.

Shortly after the attack near Eilat, Israeli warplanes attacked targets in southern Gaza which killed six people, including a two-year-old toddler and five militants from the Popular Resistance Committees.

The PRC vowed bitter revenge for the attack, which killed its leader and three other top cadres, and on Friday claimed responsibility for firing at least seven rockets and mortars into Israel.

AFP contributed to this report.

1 ) FED UP IN AMERICA / SANCTION ISRAEL

20/08/2011 01:08

israeli CRIMINALS are constantly MURDERING INNOCENT BABIES, CHILDREN, WOMEN, CIVILIANS....SANCTION THE HELL OUT OF THEM, DROP THEM TO THEIR KNEES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2 ) Strange Days / Israel

20/08/2011 01:35

Dear Fed Up. Do what you like. And we will do what we like. And we shall defend ourselves and we shall kill those that seek to kill us. Bring us to our knees? For more than 3000 years, Jews have only kneeled to G-d. We shall not kneel to you.

3 ) reason / brain

20/08/2011 02:50

It looks that Israel is escalating on purpose. As sadist and belligerants, they want an excuse to practice sadism.

4 ) Sam Woo Fi / USA

20/08/2011 02:58

Wait a minute...did Hamas call off ceasefire? What is a CEASEFIRE? If they called for ceasefire after Israelis whipped them on their soil, then why did Hamas fired rockets since 2009 war????? How many times did Hamas fire off the rockets after large number of Hamas men were killed by IDF from Gazan War? Hamas and other terror groups have sent rockets or missiles to Israel long after 2009 Gazan War and it was not a ceasefire. Hamas did not stop firing their rockets. Think about it.

5 ) FED UP IN AMERICA / SANCTION ISRAEL

20/08/2011 03:19

the name Strange fits your mentality PERFECTLY, exactly like HITLER. go ahead, invite the entire Middle East to attack you for attacking Gaza. could you be more brainless than that? NOPE! that you need to "defend" against BABIES says it ALL!!! You don't know God, the only God you recognize is your obese EGO.

6 ) Hamas' armed wing / is Righ & Wrong

20/08/2011 04:19

Hamas is RIGHT that "there can be no truce whileONE SIDE massacres the OTHER, without justification,"but Hamas is WRONG about which side kills without justification !!

Israel's retaliation is justified, since innocent Israeli tourists near Eilat were massacred first, by Palestinian fighters of Gaza, that knew that this Israeli response to their attack would follow, so they are responsible for the Gaza deaths too, and NOT Israel !!!

7 ) Israel never existed / US

20/08/2011 05:18

The Zionist entity is asking for a good whipping, better than the one it got in 2006. The doors of hell are about to open up.

8 ) Mark ben Josef to Strange Days / USA

20/08/2011 05:50

Killing families is not self-defense. It is wanton baseless murder for revenge.

9 ) Jerrold Cohen / USA

20/08/2011 07:10

This is sheer terrorism. Israelis murdering children is nothing new. It happens practically weekly every week of the year. This is not self-defense. The US Congress needs to get used to the fact that our aid to Israel is used for terrorism, and that makes our Congress people who aid and abet murder.

10 ) Gazan / Gaza, PNA

20/08/2011 08:13

Please know that the international community has a role to put an end to the bloody action and reaction in the Middle East. We are in the 21 century and there is no occupation, but Israel in the whole world. The Security Council and the Quartet must put an end to the occupation and to bloodshed.

11 ) UNSC needs to condemn terror / Liban

20/08/2011 08:15

United Nations Security Council needs to condemn all terrorism, whether committed by Syrian dicatorship, Saudi dictatorship, Iranian or Israeli apartheid states or by individual armed gangs.

The USA's disappointing behind the scenes efforts to stop a unified UNSC condemnation of this terrorism is terrible indictment on the US Government - it has no consistency and is a danger to innocents the world over.

12 ) IVAN / RUSSIA

20/08/2011 08:37

JEWISH LUFTWAFFE IN ACTION -THEY WORK VERY HARD TO KILL CHILDREN & CIVILIANS LIKE HITLERS LUFTWAFFE .

13 ) MARK / SWEDEN

20/08/2011 08:38

WHY OBAMA NOT A CEASE-FIRE TO ISRAEL FOR CRIMES IN GAZA

14 ) Strange Days / Israel

20/08/2011 08:41

Dear Fed Up. Any reason for all of the capital letters? Are you getting too excited? Calm down little man. I would hate for you to get a stroke and blame Israel.

15 ) marcus / uk

20/08/2011 09:58

You keep talking of 2006 when weakling olmert was in charge. You won't dare fight against a right wing governement. Drop nukes and destroy you scum.

16 ) Mark of Lewiston / USA

20/08/2011 19:54

13 Mark Sweden - Obama Has no influence with Netanyahu of the Palestinians. Both have told the US to get effed if Obama does not support them 110%. And the US is out of money to do anything.

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